O’Brian settled a little more
into the driver’s seat, and silently cursed the higher-up who thought teaming
him with a patrol rookie was a good idea.O’Brian hated rookies, he having been one too long ago for him to
remember the experience.“Come now,
Sergeant O’Brian,”the Captain had said
with a sly grin, “would you deny a young, eager mind the benefit of all your
long years of experience?”with a little
unnecessary emphasis on ‘long’ and ‘years,’ thought O’Brian.

He glanced in the rear view
mirror of the patrol car at white hair, a few wrinkles hither and yon on a
craggy face.He sighed.Perhaps the years had gotten long.

“Okay, Sarge?”

“Sure, sure,” said
O’Brian.“Just getting a little
impatient, I guess.”

Jones nodded.“Know what you mean.”

Like hell you do, thought
O’Brian.You know nothing.Well, next to nothing.Jones was near the top of her academy class
and some of her instructors that O’Brian knew had spoken highly of her.And she had come from a working class family,
worked her way through school.And she
didn’t talk a lot, thank god.Could have
been a lot worse, he reflected.And
maybe he should be passing on his experience before he packed it
in.He‘d been giving more than
semi-serious thought to retiring lately.World getting a little too much for him lately.Getting kinda too weird.Maybe was time to retire to his cabin at the
river.

“Shouldn’t be much longer,”
said O’Brian.He had watched the
undercover enter thegrocery store at
the corner and leave after a few minutes just as she had on the several other
nights he had been on the operation.“Need the preliminary lab report before we can move in.”

“Sure,” said Jones.“They have to take the buy all the way back
to the crime lab?”

“Nope, they’ve got a testing
rig in the van a couple of blocks down.Doesn’t take that long for prelim results.”

Jones nodded her head and
sipped from her cup.Not honest to god
coffee like cops have been drinking on stakeouts since the beginning of time,
thought O’Brian.Some health concoction.The young cops now days.

“How many buys has she made?”
asked Jones.

“This is the third.”

“How’d we catch on to this
place?” Jones asked, nodding at the high-end grocery store across the
street.Very high end wines, beers,
liquors and foods catering to the upper crust.Nothing like the corner grocery store of his day, to run in for a soda
and a bag of chips.Just very expensive
and exotic foods here.And it was some
of that ‘exotic’ stuff that had caused O’Brian and his team to be here.

“Some high society college
dimwit was low level dealing pills to his college friends, got tagged and
offered this place as part of a walk away deal.He took our undercover in and introduced her to the owners, did a couple
of drug buys with her and one exotic buy, then she was able to do buys on her
own.”O’Brian shook his head.

“What?Don’t like the kid getting off?”

“I don’t give a rodent’s
behind what happens to him.It’s that I
always got the feeling he was slimming on the information on this place, not
telling us something.”He shrugged.“Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

They waited silently for a
bit.“What did she buy the last time?”

“Cheetah, I think. Or snow
leopard.Don’t remember which.”

Now Jones shook her
head.“I don’t get this whole
thing.This stuff is hellah
expensive.What’s the thrill of eating
meat from an endangered species?”

Time to impart some
experience, thought O’Brian.“Started
about a decade ago.At first it was
treating other meats with additives so that they tasted like the exotics,but that just wasn’t enough some of the “job
creator” class, their appetites were whetted for the real thing. So now we have
this black market in endangered species meats.”He shook his head again. “The rich are damned fools. Always looking
for – ”

“Team One, we have a
positive,” said O’Brian’s radio.

“All right, Lab.All teams to entry positions.Entry on my mark.”To Jones, “Show time.Across the street, then along
the building line.”

They exited their car,
crossed the street and went along the front of buildings toward the front door
of the store.He let her get ahead with
her young legs.He could see two other
detectives had come around the corner and were holding just to the side of the
store’s double doors.He knew that
another detective and a couple of uniforms would be at the back door.

He paused behind Jones,
checked on his radio that everyone was in position, then said, “Entry on ten
from now.” He nodded at Jones and they walked along the front of the store and
at the ten count he held back as the others burst through shouting, “Police!
Freeze!”The guy behind the counter did
just that.The other detectives swept
the store and back room, bringing out another guy from the back and opening the
back door for the other detective and the uniforms.

O’Brian announced that they had
a search warrant, left the two store guys in the charge of a uniforms while he,
Jones and a detective with a video cameraheaded for the back.“We’ll grill
those two later and move up the food chain to their source,” said O‘Brian, “no
pun intended.”

In back they found a walk-in
refrigerator filled with various and sundry perishable foods and in the back on
a bottom shelf they found large plastic boxes. Inside one were bags of pills of
various shapes and colors.Next to that
were a couple of boxes filled with clear plastic vacuum packedpackages of various meats, each labeled in
“Latin?” asked Jones.

“Americanbald eagle. Now that‘s just downright
unpatriot,”tsked O‘Brian.“What’s that one?”

“Gorilla beringei beringei,
”read Jones.

“Mountain Gorilla,” said
O’Brian.“Eating a little close to home
there.”

As Jones picked through the
bin, sorting the packages, O’Brian idly picked a package from the other
bin.He peered at the label.“Can’t read that without my glasses.What’s that, an ‘h’?”

Jones turned to look.“Yeah, an ‘h’,” she said, then did a double
take and stared at the package.“Jesus,”
she said,“It says ‘homo sapiens’.”

It took a moment for O’Brian
to get it.Then he did and he stared at
the pink meat in the package and thought that the cabin on the river was
looking really good about now.

Anthony Lukas is a former attorney and former deputy
district attorney. For the past 18 years he has owned and operated a chocolate
shop. He began writing stories about two years ago. In July, 2013 omdb!
published “Death of Mr. Putnam”
and in April, 2014 published “The Old
Damned Fool.”